Turnout to event ‘very encouraging’

 MELANESIAN Festival of Arts and Culture chairman and National Cultural Commission director Dr Jacob Simet says the event was a success judging by the number of participants,

He said last Friday at a press conference.

“One of the outcomes I feared about was the turnout of participants: Whether there were participants from Fiji, Vanuatu, New Caledonia or the Solomon Islands and our observers,” Simet said.

“Whether they were going to come depended on how you organised things, and their perception of what attracts them to the festival. In this particular instance, I was very encouraged by the turnout. 

“As you know, we asked for 150 per country, (but) most countries went above that figure.

“New Caledonia came with 265, the Solomon Islands came with 230, Indonesia came with 250 or so, so the numbers were quite encouraging.

“On the other hand, we also had our own provincial participants.

“We expected 30 from each province, which would have given us 660 persons on the ground. We had 2200 people.

“That’s a staggering response we got.

“Although these figures gave us difficulties to manage, not only our own people but the participants from overseas, we tried our best to manage these.

“The fact that people came in numbers is a telling factor. It tells us the importance of PNG to these countries.”

Simet said despite the misunderstanding among some people that the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture and the NCC ran alone with organising the festival, “there were actually people outside of us who were involved: University of Goroka, University of PNG, Foreign Affairs Department and other organisations that were involved”.